Overview

Cucinovo is a recipe and kitchen-planning platform for households and professional food businesses. It is best suited to cooks who want recipes connected to ingredient costs and shopping, and to restaurant teams that need shared operational planning. Its free household tier is generous on recipe volume, while restaurant workflows require a paid plan.

Key features

Recipe costs can be calculated per portion and batch, with nested sub-recipes included in the roll-up. That is useful when a dish relies on prepared components, since their costs flow into the final recipe rather than being treated as separate work. Yield scaling, ingredient price updates, and menu profitability further support cost control, although the plan breakdown does not assign those capabilities to particular tiers.

Shopping lists aggregate ingredients across recipes and combine quantities, which helps when planning several meals without duplicating ingredients. Weekly meal plans and catering events adjust quantities and costs to the planned servings. Bulk CSV import and export provide a practical route for moving recipe and ingredient data, and users can also export supplied data as machine-readable JSON.

Restaurant plans permit unlimited team members and role-based access for Owners, Admins, Managers, Chefs, and Viewers. An optional Gmail connection sends email through a user's own inbox, with OAuth tokens encrypted using AES-256-GCM. Cucinovo says it complies with GDPR and identifies EU-region hosting, including production workloads in Frankfurt and Helsinki. Its stated security measures include TLS in transit, encryption at rest, bcrypt password hashing, HTTP-only JWT cookies, CSRF protection, CSP nonces, and role-based access control. Users can delete accounts, though some records may be retained where legally required.

Pricing

The Free plan costs €0.00 forever and covers one household and one user, with unlimited recipes, ingredients, and categories, plus shopping lists, sub-recipes, grocery lists, and import/export. It is a strong starting point for a solo home cook, but it does not include the meal planner or cost-per-portion feature specified for Plus.

Plus costs €7/month billed annually, or €9/mo, and supports five users with meal planning, cost per portion, a loss calculator, and family sharing. It suits households that need collaboration and costing; the five-user cap and lack of stated restaurant operations make it a poor fit for a larger kitchen team.

Starter costs €24/month billed annually, or €29/mo. It includes one location, unlimited team members, and unlimited recipes, ingredients, and categories. This is the lower-cost restaurant option for a single location that needs shared recipe access, but the plan does not include the purchase orders and event planning named for Pro.

Pro costs €66/month billed annually, or €79/mo. It includes one location, unlimited team members, purchase orders, event planning, supplier information, loss calculation, labor cost and time, and import/export. Up to five extra locations can be added at €29/mo each. The added operational tools make it the more suitable choice for restaurants coordinating purchases or events, though the extra-location charges matter for expanding groups.

Enterprise has custom pricing, unlimited locations by contract, unlimited team members, cooking mode, and recipe approvals. Restaurant plans offer a 14-day trial with full Pro access and no credit card required; after it ends, customers choose Starter or Pro to continue. The free plan is billed Free forever.

Platforms

Cucinovo is available on the web, making it an option for kitchens working through a browser. No other platform is included in its offering.

Who it's for

Home cooks can use Free for a single-person recipe collection, or Plus when family sharing, meal planning, and per-portion costing justify a subscription. A restaurant with one location and a team can start with Starter; kitchens that need event planning, purchase orders, or labor cost and time have a clearer case for Pro. Multi-location groups should consider Pro's additional-location pricing or Enterprise's contract-based unlimited locations.

Cucinovo is less compelling for a household that only wants a personal recipe archive and does not need costing or planning, or for a restaurant that needs capabilities beyond the included location count without accepting added fees or custom pricing.

Pros and cons

Pros: Unlimited recipes on Free keep a solo household from hitting a recipe-count cap.
Pros: Nested sub-recipe costing connects prepared components to portion and batch costs.
Pros: Shopping lists combine ingredient quantities across recipes, while planning adjusts quantities and costs to meals or events.
Pros: Restaurant plans include unlimited team members and role-based access, rather than requiring a separate seat for each team member.
Cons: Free is limited to one household and one user, and does not include the Plus meal planner or per-portion costing.
Cons: Pro's multi-location costs can rise by €29/mo per added location, and Enterprise uses custom pricing.
Cons: The 14-day restaurant trial gives full Pro access, but continuing afterward requires choosing a paid restaurant plan.

Alternatives

For a broader comparison of restaurant costing options, see Restaurant Recipe Costing Software; for recipe-management alternatives, see Restaurant Recipe Management Software.

Ratatool is worth considering for a free trial-sized start: its ESSAI plan allows four recipes and 15 ingredients with no subscription or credit card, while its paid plan has a listed annual monthly rate of 41 €.

Cilurzo Foodcost may suit a reader looking for a free, module-based entry point; its Lite plan covers one module's core features with volume limits, while Foodcost is included with Pro and Ultimate.

Final Menu is a potential fit for a smaller recipe collection: its free plan allows up to 10 recipes with basic costing, manual price entry, and suggested menu prices.

Chefy offers a free first core venue with costing, recipes, bulk product import, wastage recording, real-time costing updates, and team inclusion, making it an option to compare for a first venue.

Enplace is another option to compare for restaurant planning.

Melba by FoodMeUp is a paid alternative with Android, iOS, API, and web platforms, suited to readers who need those platform options.

ReciPal sells individual recipes with 60 days of editing access, unlimited downloads, basic costing, and FDA and CFIA label features, which may fit someone who needs occasional per-recipe work rather than a kitchen-wide subscription.

RistoBrain is another web-based freemium restaurant option to compare.

Verdict

Cucinovo is a strong fit for home cooks who want more than storage, and for restaurant teams that need recipes tied to costing, shopping, and event planning. Its most persuasive advantage is the connection between nested recipe costs and scaled quantities; its main drawback is that restaurant operations quickly move users from the free household tier to paid plans, with extra-location fees or custom pricing for broader groups. Choose it when that connected workflow matters; look elsewhere if you only need a basic recipe archive or want restaurant capabilities without a paid plan.

	Cucinovo	Dishboard
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	Yes	No
Paid from	€7/mo	Free
Platforms	Web	Web
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Yield and portion scaling	Yes	Yes
Menu profitability	Yes	Yes
Ingredient price updates	Yes	Yes
Multi-location support	Yes
Yield scaling	Yes
Inventory tracking		No

Cucinovo vs Dishboard

Cucinovo

Dishboard